Following a long tradition, the Russian government has defined the conflict as a struggle against banditry and terrorism—much as it did in Central Asia in the 1920s and early 1930s, and in Afghanistan in the late 1970s and 1980s. This legitimizes Russia’s course of actions, however ruthless the means, as a police function in the name of public order. The Chechens, meanwhile, refer to their war as a “struggle for national and political liberation” and an Islamic holy war, or jihad. Neither side sees the conflict as a civil war. Russia will not honor the Chechens with that political legitimacy, and Chechens refuse to accept the idea that they were ever voluntarily a part of the Russian Empire, Soviet state, or Russian Federation.
This struggle is a manifestation of what Samuel Huntington described as a “clash of civilizations.” Like other such conflict